Newspaper: NSA collects all calls in 1 foreign country

Originally published March 18, 2014 at 1:08 pm

Updated March 18, 2014 at 11:29 pm

The Washington Post is reporting that the National Security Agency has been sweeping up all of a foreign country's telephone calls, then rewinding and listening to the conversations up to a month later.

The Washington Post is reporting that the National Security Agency has been sweeping up all of a foreign country’s telephone calls, then rewinding and listening to the conversations up to a month later.

At the request of U.S. officials, the Post said it withheld details that could be used to identify the foreign country.

The program is the latest revelation from a trove of classified documents that former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden leaked to certain news organizations last year. Most of those documents have described the U.S. collecting massive amounts of data and text. This program, called MYSTIC, is different in that it captures massive amounts of audio recordings.